Whether we want to admit it or not, I suspect we’re all a bit obsessed with the letters ‘A’ and ‘B’. We choose our cars on the basis of minimising the time taken to travel between them. Which is good. It means we look at the road and what’s coming the other way rather than loitering in the ‘larger picture’ and drawing little circles on a map to denote a comfort break or the location of a car park with a view that can only be appreciated through wistfully narrowed eyes with a long exhalation of breath.
Some people make a point of stopping at places we perceive only as a grey-green blur. To us, those people register as a pinkish streak. And that tells us something. The greater the degree of colour bleed, the heavier the right foot, the deeper the commitment to a righteous cause. Trouble is, some of the world’s best roads for indulging that addictive hell-for-leather, A-to-B habit are also the most lingeringly beautiful. But this is where the wonder of perspective kicks in. Localised blurring is all the more satisfying when it melts out into the seemingly static grandeur of a truly vast vista. Small road, big country, fast car – that’s the million-dollar combination.
So when we heard that Porsche had decided to base its latest car launch at Chiclana de la Frontera in southern Spain, just an hour and a half’s drive from one of Europe’s most rewarding and best-looking roads (the rather tediously named – but anything but – CA9104 that snakes, soars and swoops between the villages of Grazalema and Zahara), we felt it would be a dereliction of duty not to let this modestly awesome stretch of blacktop illuminate the adrenalin-generating potential of the newly updated Cayman S.
If any car deserves a great road to play on, it’s the Cayman. Dismissed by some as an aesthetically challenged Boxster with a tin top and by others as being chronically testosterone-lite, the Cayman is the purest and, in many respects, best car Porsche makes. In fact, such are the innate advantages conferred by its mid-engined chassis layout, it’s pretty obvious that Porsche has resisted – a little too cynically some say – exploiting its true potential for fear of upstaging the iconic, and costlier, 911. Porsche modifiers cottoned on fast, though. Give a Cayman 400bhp-plus and the appropriate chassis tweaks, as Ruf has done with its 3400K Coupé, and inter-model Porsche rivalries at trackdays take on a whole new complexion, with 911 pilots acquiring a forced appreciation of the Cayman’s curvy rump as well as permanently perplexed expressions.
Porsche hasn’t let the Cayman off the leash completely for its mid-life overhaul (the all-new model appears in 2012), but it has given it the wherewithal to make more of its natural assets, most notably a hike in power, the dual-clutch PDK transmission so far seen only on the 911, and, although it said it never would, the option of a limited-slip differential. The visual changes are just noticeable enough to differentiate the second-generation car from its predecessor, with new bumpers and lights that seem slightly more sympathetic to the heavily radiused panels of the Cayman’s upper bodywork than before. The high-performance headlight units feature LED daytime running elements and there are LEDs in the rear lamps, too.
Inside there are more clues to make you think Porsche is relaxing the idea that the 911 must preserve its premium status at all costs. The new Cayman gets the option of the same multimedia touch-screen and iPod docking system and the whole ambience of the cabin has clicked up a couple of quality notches, looking and feeling classier and more solid than before.
The base Cayman gets a new 2.9-litre flat-six, with 261bhp (20bhp more than the old 2.7), but we’re heading for the Sierra de Grazalema in the new 3.4-litre Cayman S, which, as well as an extra 49cc, has direct injection, a 500rpm higher rev ceiling and an additional 24bhp and 22lb ft of torque, lifting the peak outputs to 315bhp at 7200rpm and 273 lb ft at 4750rpm. Order your Cayman S with the optional (£1920) seven-speed PDK gearbox and Sports Chrono package, which includes launch control, and the 0-62mph sprint can be demolished in 4.9sec, exactly the same time Porsche claims for the six-speed manual version of its base 911, the Carrera 3.6. The words ‘well’, ‘well’ and ‘well’ spring to mind.
